MOSCOW - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said on Tuesday he was troubled by a presidential election in which Vladimir Putin claimed victory and called for a discussion of whether to hold a new election.
Russian Prime Minister Putin says he won the election fairly but international monitors said the vote was skewed in his favor. Putin's opponents accept that he won the most votes but say the official election results exaggerate his popularity.Gorbachev, reviled by millions of Russians for unleashing the reforms that helped sink the Soviet Union, said it was clear there were problems during both the Dec. 4 parliamentary election and the March 4 presidential election.
"It is clear there was something up with these elections," Gorbachev, 81, told Ekho Moskvy radio station, though he refused to cite specific worries, saying he had been preoccupied with unidentified medical issues.
